Customer Reviews

Twenty Years on the Cape: My Time As a Surfcaster

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reading this book for the first time or the twentieth time, is like being on the beach with a vibrant bass in the suds. You can almost feel the brine burning the line cuts in your hands. An extremly well written book by one of the absolute masters of surf casting. A must read for anyone who wants to know what it was like in the original glory days of striped bass fishing. I am one of the fortunate ones to own a signed copy of this book.

This is one of my favorite fishing books. I'm reading it now for the third time. It's about a lifestyle that would make most of us jealous. If you enjoy surf fishing, then this book is a must.

Great look at the past of striped bass fishing on the Cape. Money, politics and fishing competition made this a great read for the avid bass angler. A time never to be visited again. The man became intergrated into the life cycle of the striped bass. As the seasons and years changed , so did the man, so did the politics, so waned the competition, so lost was the inner workings of his family. A time to remember and a time remember less.

This is not one of Daignault's better books, it reads like some poorly written nostalgic ego trip, with way too many paragraphs about beating out the regulations on beach buggy laws and surf casting that were put in place in the Cape in the 1970s. The title does certainly does not belie its contents: you indeed feel like it's been 20 years of Daignault on the Cape by the time you're finished reading it.

Terrible. The guy is in love with his "beach buggy", which to everyone else translates as big trucks like 4 X 4 Ford Broncos, GM Suburbans, and the like, and certainly not the more aptly suitable dune buggy-like vehicles, given it's about fishing on the Cape. Tells of his beloved "beach buggies" take a significant part of his book.

The author keeps complaining over and over, from beach regulations against RVs and trucks, err... "beach buggies" to fishing regulations, and he makes it clear very early that he's aiming at making surfcasting a profitable business.

If, to you, surfcasting is a sport, if surfcasting means a unique opportunity to be closer to Nature, having the sea before you, dunes behind, over a sunset mean a lot to you, or if you're looking simply for fishing stories, or tricks of the trade, or funny or humorous tales (as it happens to almost anyone!), or if you were looking for a book which would remind of your own fishing trips, you won't find that in this book.

The author relates his "surfcasting" experience from the '60s to the late '80s, those golden years of surfcasting, before fish stocks collapsed.

I was on the Cape back then, and recalling my own surfcasting experience, I can testify that anyone who had his first 30-pounder bluefish on a 12-pound test line could tell you in vivid colours his experience to land that fish.

The title and the photo on the cover lead you believe that is what you'll find in his book.

What I've found is an angry man, his trucks, $$$ and that he couldn't care less about Cape Cod natural beauty, or... the joy of surfcasting.